Ponder now the mysteries of the primordial kinship between father and his male offspring. Some fish; some have a catch. Some dads have heart attacks and shit their pants when their sons go on a sustained campaign to scare them. This is one of those father-son relationships.

There needs to be a term for when the shining tech star of the previous generation of the internet burns out then sells for less than the world's most expensive dollhouse. MySpacing out? New York tech incubator Betaworks has bought the skeleton of Digg, once a social networking monster—it even got verbed!—for a paltry…

Yelp: Full of altruistic, food-loving people who get a kick out of highlighting restaurants they love, right? Wrong. The "Yelp Mafia" is a violent ravenous mob, bound by a shadowy covenant whose only condition is power—and free food.

A study by grad students at MIT produced this chart describing the average activity on 4chan over a two-week span. Those familiar with the site will not be surprised that it really livens up in the off-hours.

Technology seemed especially relevant in 2010, what with The Social Network's blockbuster receipts and mass mania for Apple's iPad and iPhone 4. The newfound attention helped turned some techies into genuine stars — while lending others real worldwide infamy.

Digg will cut 25 of 67 staff, said the social news site's new CEO. Users and executives have been defecting, but Digg will still have 10 times as many staff as rival Reddit. Now it just needs Reddit's outsized momentum.

In his debut blog post as CEO, Digg's Matt Williams writes he's "deeply sorry" about the social news site's "disappointing redesign." Sad: Williams inherited the redesign entirely from Digg co-founder Kevin Rose. Hopefully Williams' contract includes a groveling bonus. [Pic]

Give Kevin Rose credit: The Digg CEO keeps a cool head. "Gotta take risk" was the tech playboy's cheerful response to Digg's mounting problems today. His secret to staying relaxed: Extracurricular investments with buddies hedge Rose well against Digg's death.

Enjoy the fine mess, Matt Williams. Digg's newly announced CEO has the privilege of cleaning up after a redesign that has users up in arms, the social news site scrambling to add back old features, and rival Reddit surging.

Unhappy with a deal that Digg.com's management cut with major media companies, the social news site's users turned Digg's front page into a de facto advertisement for rival aggregator Reddit today, upvoting scores of Reddit links.

There's seems to be a nerdy arms race under way over who can propose to their fiancée the most ridiculously networked fashion. Digg's Matt Van Horn, who just live-streamed video of his proposal, is the winner. For now.

Would it be diffcult to game news aggregation giant Digg's simple up-vote/down-vote system for selecting links for its heavily-trafficked front page? Not really: The right-wing group "Digg Patriots" appears to have engaged in a multiyear effort to "bury" left-leaning sites.

Kevin Rose could hardly have sent a clearer signal: Less than 12 hours after announcing his takeover as CEO, the Digg co-founder killed the social news site's controversial "DiggBar." It would seem Rose finally had it with Digg inflating traffic.

Kevin Rose has a new high-pressure job now that he's taken over as Digg's CEO. Staunching Digg's user bleed to Twitter a big challenge. Even bigger: Doing this while maintaining his relationship with sugar-phobic food blogger Darya Pino.

Can Digg ever become the powerhouse it so badly wanted to be? It's a natural question amid the departure of five-year CEO Jay Adelson, the latest in a line of painful goodbyes for the social news site.

BusinessWeek made Kevin Rose a Web 2.0 poster-boy when its cover proclaimed he had "made $60 million," in completely imaginary money. Three years later, that bubble long gone, his picture makes the perfect ironic Halloween costume.

The traffic, it was too much: Digg just went down, a likely victim of an overwhelming surge of traffic around the ongoing keynote speech at Apple's developer conference. What's weird about this news?

If you wanted to imagine a topsy-turvy world where straight 19-year-old jock-nerds ran the media, just visit Digg. The site is so laden with antigay epithets that it automatically censors the word "homo" from headlines.